The present disclosure relates to components for a gas turbine engine and, more particularly, to a stiffness controlled abradeable seal system therefor.
Gas turbine engines, such as those that power modern commercial and military aircraft, generally include a compressor section to pressurize an airflow, a combustor section to burn a hydrocarbon fuel in the presence of the pressurized air, and a turbine section to extract energy from the resultant combustion gases. Seal systems are utilized in many locations within the engine to segregate pressures within the engine sections various protect hardware within the engine from core-gas ingestion.
One type of seal system is an abradeable seal that operates by wearing away one or both seal surfaces to provide a tight, line-on-line interface. The pressure that pushes the sliding interfaces together that controls the interface incursion largely dictates the temperature, wear process, and durability of the abradeable materials. The pressure that pushes the sliding interfaces together is typically determined by experimentation, or has not been considered as a major design parameter previously.